Prismatic Shields tips

[Eddo]

Am I right in saying, in any ship that I didn't feel a Bi-Weave is necessary, and I am happy with the vanilla shield, that ship is probably better off with Prismatics?

If weight and power is not an issue. I finally got around to try them out. My presumption is that trader ship would probably be good candidates for them or ships used for strong opponents like Thargoids/PvP ships.


If you have suggestion on what ship to use for Prismatics, I am all ears. Thanks in advance.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Prismatics are good for cases, where you need to outlast one long fight, as their recharge times are too long for consequential fights. That's why I prefer to have them on cargo/mission ships that have rare engagements, so the shields have time to recharge in between.

[Agony_Aunt]

Prismatics are good for assassination missions, especially doing wing assassinations solo.

Bi-weaves are good for combat zones, where to play on staying out a long time.

[HamakiBCN2]

Agreed to all that has been said. Great for single engagements, but terrible for CZ's and HazRES. The recharge in a size 8 takes so long you may well have to dock in a station to have them recharge at all, and even then it may take several minutes.

As for which ships benefit the most from prismatics, that would be ships that already have good shield rating on their own, like FDL or Cutter.

Ships with low shields usually benefit more from bi-weaves and engineering resistances.

[L37]

Worse for CZ/RES but would not say terrible. Just have to assume that waiting for recharge is not an option and use reboot, or bring SCB-s.
I personally use prismatic as "default" shield on most ships, because it seems good for multipurpose use with relatively rare but potentially harder (ship not optimized for combat) fights, as well as assasinations and such.
There are a couple of specialized loadouts where they are worse than alternative options, like res/cz grinding loadout, or jump range/speed optimized loadouts where mass is important.

For ships - IMO anything with small shield generator and high shield multiplier (=> strong shield as a result) benefits the most. Recharge is low anyway on small generators, biweave does not help much with it, and stength difference is significant.

[HamakiBCN2]

"Terrible" may have been a bit hyperbolic. A bit pointless is more like it.

In CZ's,personally i find Prismatics to be a bit of a paradox, specially since Guardian Shield Reinforcements became a thing. As you said, when you mount Prismatics, you depend on SCB's, meaning you have to lose at least one internal slot (more than likely two) that could otherwise be used for GSR's (relevant for medium ships, not so much Large ones) and of course you have to equip Heatsinks, meaning you lose utility slots for SB's or Chaff. So you're supposed to have strong single-use shields, except you're loosing potenetial MJ's in GSR's and SB's. And resistances. And you still have to deal with all the drawbacks.

That's why personally, in CZ's, i use Bi-weaves with Thermal Resistance and Fast Charge, and then as many SB's as i can, a couple with Heavy Duty and the rest all to High Resistance. One or two GSR's if it's a medium. That way i end up with a shield that's just as capable of soaking damage as if it was Prismatic, except i don't depend on a limited supply of SCB's and Heat Sinks, so i can stay there much longer.

In fact it is so much so that, when in CZ in a wing, my loadout is a medium Krait Mk2 with 2 efficient regens beams, the only purpose of which is to keep my wingmates with Large prismatics in the fight, while my own bi-weaves are doing just fine.

Note: in CZ's, it is important to remember it's never going to be a 1 v 1 engagement. it can easily become an NPC gankfest before you know it. Too many pilots assume that because they're carrying size 8 Prismatics and SCB's, they're invincible in a CZ. That usually becomes an expensive mistake.

That's not to say prismatics don't have their place. In non-combat builds and PvP, certainly they do.

Then again, the Prismatics vs. Bi-weaves debate started the day they were released and hasn't been solved since, nor it will ever be

[Eddo]

Thanks for the thoughts.

The one I am most on the fence is my Corvette; where I I will feasibly use that for "high difficulty combat" and for CZ.


I guess there is nothing stopping me having both with stored modules.

[HamakiBCN2]

Originally posted by Eddo:

Thanks for the thoughts.

The one I am most on the fence is my Corvette; where I I will feasibly use that for "high difficulty combat" and for CZ.


I guess there is nothing stopping me having both with stored modules.

Exactly. at the end of the day, what's best is to try different configurations and see what best suits your playstyle.

[L37]

Originally posted by HamakiBCN2:

...
Then again, the Prismatics vs. Bi-weaves debate started the day they were released and hasn't been solved since, nor it will ever be

Yeah, and things like guardian reinforcements, changes to armored power plant upgrade and such only added more variables.
At this point i'd say any choice is viable as long as you use all the advantages it offers.
For example, it is totally possible to use single 7A SCB on corvette without HSL and not overheat. Most likely the same works for all the ships (did not try). If you have large shield and use SCB-s to restore it between fights - HSL is not really needed.
One thing i definitely like about prismatic is that it makes ship much more resistant to things like occasional lithobraking and such :)

Originally posted by Eddo:

Thanks for the thoughts.

The one I am most on the fence is my Corvette; where I I will feasibly use that for "high difficulty combat" and for CZ.


I guess there is nothing stopping me having both with stored modules.

Having both seems like good idea.
Specifically for corvette though for me prismatic is mostly sitting in storage. Too much shield already, even with biweave, to ever be in any danger of loosing it in PVE, so biweave is just more convinient. Might be still useful for PVP though, which i did not do for at least some years...

[Mr Robert House]

Prismatic are for ships which can't run away to recharge, and can't hulltank particularly well either, but have a good base shield value.also they're good for ships running shield cell banks to avoid wasting some of their regen.

My corvette and anaconda have one, my cutter also does but a bi weave would have been a better choice against npcs. My python with 3 SCBs has one to get enough strength out of a c5 shield in order to have 3 class 6 SCBs (idk if that's optimal but it works)

All my cargo and mining ships have one because why not. Too heavy for exploring.

My builds are generally ammo hungry anyway so I need to return to stations, bi-weave cutter with lasers and you can stay fighting all day. Pretty boring though.

[yminale]

I use to think more is better but for some reason I decided to use Bi-Weave with Fast charge and I got to admit when fighting Thargoid scouts, it's better than reinforced shields or Prismatics. As other have said at least against NPC's , Small and medium ships should use Bi-Weave. Shield Tanks are good for big targets that you fight infrequently aka PvP death matches.

[Eddo]

My final solution is to have 1 of each class in storage in case I need them in the future, on top of a few ships I defintely wanted like my transport fleet and mission runner.

Now the issue is collect enough material again to engineer them all.

[HamakiBCN2]

Originally posted by Eddo:

My final solution is to have 1 of each class in storage in case I need them in the future, on top of a few ships I defintely wanted like my transport fleet and mission runner.

Now the issue is collect enough material again to engineer them all.

Remember to buy at least one prismatic of each size before leaving the Aisling faction, as you'll lose the ability to buy more when you leave and will have to start the whole process again if you want another prismatic. I learnt that the hard way

[Eddo]

Yeah, I probably won't bother with the smaller ships, but I had some big ones just in case more big ships are released.

[shiny_dirk]

what you can do is for just normal pve on a non-ammo loadout, every once in a while when the prismatics are about to run out - reboot/repair in between 2 fights and that juicy shield comes back up to 50%

thats what i do when i want to sit in a hazrez for a long time

[Hobo Misanthropus]

I have a 1A in my hauler, because I like having a rebuy cost 100x the value of the my ramming ship.